Page:Recollections of John Howard Redfield.djvu/25

Rh daughters. The town records of New London show that during the family's residence there, the name of Redfin became changed to Redfield, which henceforth was the recorded name. The reason for the change is not apparent, but the evidence of the fact is incontestable. His slender land-holdings and other circumstances show that like many of the early immigrants he was possessed of but little property. One or two brief entries in a manuscript diary kept by a Lieut. Minor, of New London, and still extant, indicate that he exercised the trade of stone-mason when opportunity offered.

His only son, James, was born about 1646, and just before the death of his father was apprenticed to a tanner in New London, but before the expiration of his term of service his master broke up his establishment and removed to Newark, N.J., leaving the young man free. In 1669 he married in New Haven, Conn., Elizabeth How (or Howe), of the same family into which Dixwell, the so-called regicide, married. The New Haven records show that a daughter, Elizabeth, was born to him in that town in 1670, but he must have left there soon after, for in 1671 his name appears as one of the inhabitants of Tisbury, in Mar-